Kevin Berry Spraggett was born in Montreal. Awarded the IM title in 1975 and the GM title in 1985, he was joint Commonwealth Champion in 1984 and 1985 and won the Canadian Championship in 1984. In tournaments he was 1st at Montreal 1986 and 2nd= at Hastings 1989-90. He won the Canadian Open and Canadian Closed in 1996, but also seems to be enjoying his latter years of life in European countries such as Portugal.

In July 1989, he was tied for players placed 25th or higher on the International Chess Federation rankings list. He has represented Canada 8 times during many of the 1986-2002 Olympiads on 2nd board or higher, accumulating 51.5 points in 91 team games. He has qualified for the Candidates twice, in 1985 and 1988. In 1985 he did not make the play-offs but in 1988 he beat Andrei Sokolov (+2, =9, -1), later losing to Artur Yusupov (+1, =6, -2) in 1989.

Refused: Actually nice to see GM actually understanding how a website is supposed to be. Ok, personally I would remove that rotten pic (aka graphic suicide) with a meme. But well, I would not be too surprised if he picked up a few ideas from 4chan.

To those complaining the site is a bit too explicit or something <Welcome to the internet.>

docbenway: Mister Spraggett, since you're adroit at heaping criticism on Obama and singing the praise of Putin you're surprising silent on your website about the mass murder in the skies over Ukraine that is being linked to your hero's military support of the separatists.

TheFocus: <The ‘‘Russian School’’ training system and the ‘‘Botvinnik’’ training system are both work intensive programs that often require years of collaboration with the trainer to be effective. This effectiveness is not in doubt, and has been proven over and over again throughout the years. However, the student is required to do much independent work at home, just as if he was taking a university course. Therefore any expectations of even short term gains are pure nonsense> - Kevin Spraggett.

PhilFeeley: <AgentRgent> As an addendum, I recently found this in John Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy: Advances Since Nimzowitsch".

On page 14, he writes: " It is important to realize that the beginning of his book <My System> is to some extent an introduction to chess. It therefore includes a number of elementary 'rules' for the student, some of which Nimzowitsch himself did not adhere to."

keypusher: < bravado1: These remarks about "My System" are to say the least unfair. I'm not an expert on chess hisrory, but I think that the work by Nimzowitsch was breakthrough and revolutionary not because of the analyses of specific positions - here obviously Nimzo made mistakes - but in the general "systematic" approach to chess. Before him people either analyzed particular games or limited themselves to laconic observations that 'in this kind of positions white is always better". >

Steinitz? Tarrasch?

<not because of the analyses of specific positions - here obviously Nimzo made mistakes>

Accuracy in annotations counts for a lot, I think. Or it should. I enjoy reading Tarrasch's annotations more than Lasker's, but if Lasker is seeing things that Tarrasch is missing, or avoiding errors that Tarrasch is making, I suspect I'm better off studying with Lasker.

This is separate and apart from the notion that in some of his annotations, Nimzowitsch basically misrepresented what was going on in the game.

<Nerwal: <If you don't approve Nimzowitsch's demonstrations of the "My System" concepts in games versus "C-class" players (as Marshall, Teichmann, Tarrasch, Bogoljubov, Rubinstein and some-such>
It was probably a reference to games like this one : Von Gottschall vs Nimzowitsch, 1926. Dvoretsky proved that White could equalize at various points and that black's "deep moves" were actually not that strong objectively. A good grandmaster should be able to hold this as White without breaking a sweat, while Gottschall did everything wrong basically.>

Ron: From Spraggett's blog:
<I am no fan of Cameron. Never was. I always felt he was just another irresponsible yuppie-politician clone like Blair before him. Soon after being elected in 2010 he was in cohorts with the CIA to do away with Kadaffi, which lead to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. Lybia is still burning today…Cameron then wanted to bomb Syria and do away with Assad, but his own parliament stopped him at the last moment.

Cameron then felt that he could use the referendum tool to impose his will on the British people, betting that he would have the mass-media and infinite government resources at his disposal to create a 1984-inspired climate of fear and anxiety. It worked well in the Fauklands, and in Scotland. But by the time Brexit came around, most people in Britain were tired of his offensive use of fear mongering and directly lying to the people. Even Merkel objected to Cameron’s underhanded tactics.

So now Britain must face the consequences of reality finally catching up to the yuppie-politician. FORTUNATELY, this time it will not be hundreds of thousands of innocents in countries far away who will suffer. This time the British people themselves will pay the consequences of choosing incompetent and scheming leaders.

This time the destruction will really hit home. Every man , woman and child in Britain will suffer. The independence issues of Scotland and Ireland will have be reviewed. As it should be. Cameron was not just elected, but re-elected. Britain will have to be re-built from the bottom up. Perhaps, if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is this: Britain deserves decent leaders, individuals of character and integrity, leaders who will not one day in the near future risk being tried for War Crimes.

But before then, the British people will have to pay the consequences of living in a democracy. I have little compassion for the Scots who feel that their voice was not heard. Did they not just hold their own referendum and voted to remain by Britain’s side? Now they don’t like it…I say that they should have known that their own choice has consequences. You reap what you sow…

But BEST of all, what I like most about the Brexit referendum is the MESSAGE that Britain sends to the unelected leadership in Brussels: @#$% YOU! Many millions of europeans also feel it is time to dismantle an outdated model that is already anti-democratic and even threatening to become fascist in nature.>

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